About Mircea Cantor

Best known for his evocative, metaphorical videos and mixed-media installations, Mircea Cantor makes work reflective of a broad worldview that is at once optimistic and trenchantly critical. In his works, he examines competing ideologies, war, displacement, the self and the other, and multivalence. Keenly aware of the multitude of meanings that a word or an object can contain, he deliberately mixes materials and uses language playfully, producing poignant, challenging works that defy neat categorization. He also refuses to be neatly defined, as he explains: “We know who we are, so why not go deeper? Let’s stand for something other than our nationality. [. . .] [My] objects speak of the great openness in which we can live today, beyond national categories.” Cantor won the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2011.